Human Rights (Saudi Arabia)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart McDonald) on securing the debate; he has been a persistent and passionate agitator on the issue since his election, and remains so. He reminded us of the case of Raif Badawi, a 31-year-old Saudi Arabian writer and activist, who is married with three children. My hon. Friend detailed his trial, conviction, horrendous sentence and punishment for the crime described as “setting up a liberal website”. I should declare an interest as a member of Amnesty International, which has been campaigning on the issue.

Following Mr Badawi’s arrest, Amnesty designated him a prisoner of conscience,

“detained solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression”,

and noted:

“Even in Saudi Arabia where state repression is rife, it is beyond the pale to seek the death penalty for an activist whose only ‘crime’ was to enable social debate online”.

Numerous other campaign groups, such as Free Raif UK, English PEN and other well known human rights groups, also deserve credit for keeping Mr Badawi’s case in the public eye. Doing that retains pressure on the Saudi authorities and provides support for the friends and family of Raif Badawi, Waleed Abulkhair, who I think is Mr Badawi’s lawyer, and various others. By securing this debate, my hon. Friend has made a further contribution to that important task and provided the hope that he spoke about. Whether even more can come from the debate is down to the Government. I support my hon. Friend’s simple requests that the United Kingdom Government call for Mr Badawi’s release and seek permission to visit him in prison. So far, the UK Government have had too little to say publicly about this issue. We wait with interest to hear what the Minister will say today.

None of this is to say that we fail to recognise the difficulties and complexities involved in international diplomacy. Sometimes diplomacy behind closed doors can work—indeed, the suggestion so far from the UK Government is that their approach to Saudi Arabia is to pursue diplomacy behind closed doors. However, in this case, public silence is no longer an option; in reality, it never was.

Concern is not enough because, first of all, people see an inherent hypocrisy that is far too large to ignore. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) highlighted in her intervention, the double standards being applied cannot be tolerated. At the start of this year, in the wake of the horrific Charlie Hebdo attack, our Prime Minister walked with thousands of others along the streets of Paris to protest in support of freedom of expression. Among the marchers was the Saudi Arabian ambassador to France. Both France and the United Kingdom have a strong belief in freedom of expression, but the same cannot be said about Saudi Arabia. Just two days before that march, Raif Badawi had received the first 50 lashes for his so-called offence—an offence of expression.

Secondly and even more importantly, to citizens of this country looking in from the outside the process of diplomacy behind closed doors just does not appear to be working or achieving anything, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South pointed out. The softly-softly approach is seen as amounting to not very much at all. It is simply untrue to suggest that there has been a substantial improvement in human rights in Saudi Arabia through that approach, as my hon. Friend explained. This year, the country has already executed more than 100 people. That surpasses the total for last year.

The slow burn of British diplomacy might even appear to be encouraging an aura or attitude of impunity in the Saudi Government, nurturing the idea that they can get away with human rights abuses if they talk a good game on human rights. As my hon. Friend highlighted, Saudi Arabia is considering seeking the chairmanship of the UN Human Rights Council next year, yet two months ago it advertised for eight new executioners, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out. Recently, it hosted a regional human rights meeting just three days before the supreme court upheld the sentence against Raif Badawi. When called out on its human rights record by the media, the Government of Saudi Arabia claim that it is

“one of the first States to promote and support human rights”

as if those words on their own are enough.

The case of Raif Badawi has proved to be a rallying point, casting light on problems that, as many hon. Members said, go much further than his own. He is a man whose bravery puts a human face on the statistics that we hear about the scale of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, but those statistics and the other stories that we have heard today continue to provide grave cause for concern.

As the hon. Member for Strangford highlighted, the persecution of Christians is extremely concerning. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) set out, the situation for women is also terrible. The few rights that do exist in Saudi Arabia essentially do not extend to women—in fact, “human rights”, in so far as they exist in Saudi Arabia, really means men’s rights. My hon. Friend also highlighted the persecution of LGBT people in that country. The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) highlighted concerns regarding Saudi activities in Yemen and the exploitation of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia.

Worse even than the failure publicly to criticise and condemn has been the United Kingdom Government’s tendency almost to excuse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South highlighted, it was recently suggested in the House of Lords that the treatment of Raif Badawi largely meets with public approval in Saudi Arabia. That is an objectionable argument on so many levels. Not only should we, as hon. Members have said, take such assertions with a large pinch of salt; most significantly, we can never say that human rights abuses are all right and should be ignored if a majority in a particular country agrees with them.

We argue for a new approach, and in Europe, as we have heard today, there are glimmers of hope. The hon. Members for Strangford and for Islington North pointed out that Germany and Sweden have started to speak out, with Sweden withdrawing from a security and trade agreement with Riyadh, effectively blocking arms exports. Meanwhile, Germany has ended an export deal for Leopard tanks because of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and it warned that the sentence against Mr Badawi was damaging relations. We were just speaking of opinion polls, and opinion polls there show that the German public are against any form of trade with the Arab state, with a large majority against arms sales.

[Stewart McDonald]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about Sweden’s trade deals with Saudi Arabia being ended and Germany’s refusal to sell tanks to the Saudi regime. Does he share my concern that the United Kingdom Government have not so much as refused to sell a single bullet to the Saudi regime?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I absolutely agree. In coming to a conclusion about what my hon. Friend has asked for today, I will say that we recognise the complexities of international diplomacy, but back-room bargaining is no longer enough—indeed, it never really was. At the very least, as my hon. Friend suggests, we require the UK Government to call for Mr Badawi’s release and to seek permission to visit him in prison. That is not much to ask. As the hon. Member for Islington North said, the United Kingdom Government need to rethink their approach to Saudi Arabia altogether. Our requests are modest, and we look forward to hearing what the Government have to say in response.